The present invention relates to a device and method for sealing an irrigation sprinkler canister to prevent it from discharging water. Specifically, the invention relates to a device and method capable of sealing nearly all types of irrigation sprinkler canister that have been made presently available on the market.
In recent years, automatic irrigation sprinkler systems have been installed in many gardens and public spaces in the United States and other countries. During its time, the automatic irrigation sprinkler system has provided an extremely useful system for controlling the flow of water onto garden landscapes. A typical automatic irrigation sprinkler system is shown in FIG. 1 in exploded condition. It includes a canister that is planted permanently in the ground and is connected via a permanently fixed underground water conduit to a system (not shown) adapted to periodically supply water under pressure to the canister. A typical sprinkler canister includes a housing 102 that is connected to the water supply conduit 120. The housing is configured to be closed off by a cap 104. The cap removably holds within the housing a pop-up riser 122 that is biased to a downward position by a spring 124. A sprinkler nozzle 126 is positioned on top of the riser 122. Under the pressure of water from the supply conduit, the riser is forced upwardly against the bias of the spring to elevate through a hole in the cap to a few inches above the ground, and to discharge water by sprinkling from the nozzle until such time as the water supply is automatically closed off whereupon the riser sinks back into the housing and out of view under bias of the spring. A throat piece 106 is generally found in each typical canister, as described in more detail below. At the time this type of irrigation system was introduced onto the market, it represented a considerable advantage over the previously applied systems that included extending a movable hose above ground onto the landscape, and irrigating the landscape by manual control of the hose. Such manual irrigation was of course labor intensive, inflexible, costly to operate, and not at all frugal in the use of water. Accordingly, manual irrigation has been largely replaced with automatic sprinkler irrigation as a definite improvement over past systems.
However, with the passage of time, and despite the more economical water usage by automatic sprinkler irrigation systems, the demand for water for irrigation has increased dramatically, while the supply of water has remained substantially constant. Consequently, it has been determined that a system even more frugal in its consumption of water than automatic sprinkler irrigation is required today for irrigating garden landscapes. One such system that has been recently developed is the drip irrigation system, or a low flow irrigation system, in which “bubbler nozzles” are located strategically in a garden landscape, all nozzles being connected via conduit to a system that supplies water under pressure to the nozzles. Instead of sprinkling water through the air onto plants, a bubbler nozzle discharges a small amount of water directly at the root of a plant which then soaks into the soil, thereby being much more accurately delivered and losing much less water to evaporation and wind dispersion than water discharged through the air onto the leaves of a plant, or even nearby the plant on the ground, as is the case with sprinkler irrigation. One aspect of introducing such a drip irrigation system to replace a sprinkler irrigation system is that the drip system may conveniently tap into an existing water distribution network comprising water conduits buried underground that has been previously installed for use with a now defunct automatic sprinkler irrigation system. However, a drip system connected in this way requires all existing sprinkler canisters to be disabled so that they do not sprinkle water through the air according to the method of an irrigation sprinkler. Thus, as ever more automatic sprinkler irrigation systems are replaced with drip or low flow irrigation systems, an ever increasing number of irrigation sprinkler canisters will require to be disabled to make way for drip irrigation technology. At present, the typically preferred way to effectively disable a sprinkler canister is for the user to expose the canister by digging a hole in the ground around the canister, and to then remove the canister from its threaded connection to the conduit water distribution system, after which the user may apply a threaded cap to the exposed conduit to permanently seal it off. After doing so, the user will close the hole and bury the capped off conduit, while disposing of the canister or placing it in storage. Over the passage of time, the location of the capped off conduit will likely be forgotten. This method suffers from a first disadvantage that disabling the canister requires a substantial amount of work to excavate and remove the canister from the ground. A second disadvantage is that, while the canister is removed from its threaded connection to the conduit, earth may fall into the temporary opening in the distribution system while the canister is removed, and this is a well known source of blockages in a subsequent drip system. A third disadvantage is that the canister is permanently removed from the water distribution system and its connection point is forgotten. Thus, if ever its temporary usage is again required, it is difficult to reinstate.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a system and method for disabling irrigation canisters that solves the problems in the prior art. The present invention addresses these and other needs.